Christian writer Michael Spencer has an interesting piece in the Christian Science Monitor today that I think presents a largely accurate picture of the future of American evangelicalism. I don’t agree with everything he says, but it’s all worth pondering and discussing. Here are a few excerpts:
We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.
Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.
This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.
Anyone with half an eye can see that there is a growing anti-Christian sentiment in the West, partially as a result of the rising tide of atheism and agnosticism, partially as a result of spreading hedonism. Evangelicalism, along with Catholicism and Orthodoxy, stand athwart such trends, and as they become more and more the norm, Christians will look more and more like relics who deserve to be run over be the rushing train of culture. It is also the case that evangelical churches are seriously unprepared to deal with this future, as Spencer points out in asking why this is going to happen:
2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
This is sadly true, and is explained at least in part by the fact that immersion in a culture that is hostile to our faith (not just our moral values) makes the relatively small amount of time that is spent in Christian endeavors all too often futile. Our children and youth must be taught how to live the faith in every choice and at every moment, not just when they happen to be occupied in “Christian activity.” But to do this, they must also be convinced that what they are doing is right and true, despite the constant messages to the contrary that they receive every day.
5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.
This is already the case in some areas of ministry (ex-gay work, crisis pregnancy centers) that touch on controversial moral or lifestyle issues. Christian efforts to penetrate sectors of the culture that are considered secular “property” (schools and colleges, media, politics, science) are also viewed with suspicion and hostility, even outright opposition in some quarters. Such responses are not only bad for Christians, they are bad for society as a whole, as they eat away at some of the most vital liberties of a free society. But those engaged in the effort to eradicate Christian influence in the mind and conscience forming sectors of the culture are growing less and less concerned with that, thinking that they are saving society from a medievalist scourge. I hope that Spencer over-estimates the degree to which ministries will downplay their Christian identity in order to survive institutionally, but I can’t say for sure that he does.
He then goes on to ask, “what will be left?”:
•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.
God help us all if he’s right here. Personally, I don’t think that such churches have any reason to survive, so I won’t mourn their passing, but the resources that will be wasted in propping them up will be unfortunate.
•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.
Folks like this are already at work. My friend Mike Pasquarello, a preaching professor at Asbury Seminary, and I have talked about the need for this for years, and he’s doing his part with his students there and books that he’s written seeking to recover the theological heritage and practical experience of the Church that we have forgotten as we’ve fallen prey to the heresies of the new and therapeutic. (You can find his books, Sacred Rhetoric: Preaching as a Theological and Pastoral Practice of the Church; Christian Preaching: A Trinitarian Theology of Proclamation; and Narrative Reading, Narrative Preaching: Reuniting New Testament Interpretation and Proclamation at Amazon.) I will post on others as I think of them. The point is that this has already begun. The extent to which it is penetrating the evangelical conscienceness, however, remains to be seen.
•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.
•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.
The first of these is already starting, as people like Brian McLaren become more comfortable with the National Council of Churches crowd than the evangelicals from which they sprang. As for the second, I think they will become less common and smaller, but they will never disappear. Fundamentalism isn’t just a theological stance, it’s also a mind-set, and people of fundamentalist mind-set will always be with us–some as conservative Christians, some as liberal college professors.
•Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?
This is also happening now. There are more missionaries from South Korea in the United States than there are American missionaries in South Korea, for instance. The question is whether these workers–from places as diverse as Nigeria, Honduras, and mainland China–will be able and willing to go beyond ministering to their own ethnic group and become universal missionaries. I mean, WASPs need the gospel too, right?
Spencer’s final section asks, “Is all this a bad thing?” I’ll leave that to you to read and answer on your own. But by all means read the whole piece.
March 10, 2009 at 11:12 am
“Anyone with half an eye can see that there is a growing anti-Christian sentiment in the West, partially as a result of the rising tide of atheism and agnosticism, partially as a result of spreading hedonism.”
I don’t really see things as grim as all this, but I would say that if there is a growing anti-Christian sentiment in the West, and if those are two of the possible reasons, then it seems like you’ve forgotten another: evangelicalism itself.
People rarely are clear headed enough to see the negative results of their own actions. But I would say that evangelicals have, mostly due to misguided political marriages of convenience with fundamentalists, certainly done very little to polish their own reputations. Firstly, I think most folks in this country don’t know the difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists — and in that, I’m including most evangelicals and most fundamentalists. But because of these relationships, evangelicals are now seen the tattletales, busybodies, fusspots and scolds of America.
Sorry, strike that.
What I mean is that evangelicals are now seen as the *hypocritical* tattletales, busybodies, fusspots, and scolds of America. Ted Haggard and about 20 other anti-gay ministers caught with their pants down helped seal that image in the minds of Americans, but they’re not the only ones. The daily onslaught of news stories about pastors abusing members of their congregations, using the vast wealth of their mega-churches to pay hush money, etc., etc., etc.
A liberal conspiracy to demonize evangelicals, or the natural result of an information culture, one that those who are used to unquestioned loyalty have yet to become acclimated? I’d say the latter …. though we all like to see a busybody get what’s coming to him/her.
Regardless of the reality, I think the perception of a large swath of Americans is that fundamentalists & evangelicals do nothing but point fingers at others, do not contribute in any meaningful way to society, and mostly think they’re better than everyone else (and that they’re bought and paid for by the Republican party — hitching your wagon to that particular old nag now seems much less clever, doesn’t it?) When your public image is simply a bunch of Gladys Kravitz’s yelling at everyone about their own lives, your movement is obviously going to have some problems.
Reality or simply perception? Doesn’t matter if it’s only perception, I think American evangelicalism ignores those perceptions at the price of their own cultural relevance … and possibly existence as a movement.
March 10, 2009 at 11:15 am
Oh, and let’s not forget that when Americans see evangelicals on TV, yelling, shouting, and using the same disingenuous rhetoric that we get from politicians and even worse, pundits, it doesn’t help their credibility much either.
March 10, 2009 at 11:33 am
Alan: I agree with most of what you say. Your point about the lack of any perceived difference between evangelicals and fundamentalists is especially on target. And you’re right that even most evangelicals can’t say what the difference is–yet another facet of our lack of adequate Christian education.
The most unfortunate thing is that most evangelicals (at least the ones I know, which is a pretty broad picture in both the mainline and non-mainline denominations, few of whom have any public profile at all) don’t fit the stereotype. They don’t think they’re better than others, have a strong sense of humility, aren’t any more political than the rest of the population, etc. But you’re absolutely right that it doesn’t matter whether the stereotype is true or not–if it’s perceived to be true, that what counts, and that’s what evangelicals are up against.
March 10, 2009 at 12:08 pm
BTW, I totally agree with the general lack of a focus on evangelism in most churches these days, of any theological stripe. It’s hardly new to say that we could learn a lot about evangelism from the Mormons and the JWs.
I also agree with you about the sad state of affairs of Christian education. It is a well-researched fact that most people teach how they’ve been taught. And, since we rely almost entirely on volunteers for teaching sunday school, folks with little knowledge of childhood development, pedagogy, or educational philosophy, we cannot be surprised that we teach our students in Sunday school with the same out-of-date methods that failing schools have been using since our Sunday school teachers were in grade school. I don’t know the solution to that problem.
(As an example of what I mean, I noticed the other day that I’d never heard a children’s sermon that wasn’t based on analogical reasoning, a complicated form of reasoning that many children don’t start using until they’ve grown past the age of paying any attention to children’s sermons.)
March 10, 2009 at 5:29 pm
“The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.”
I think the author, and most Americans, downplay the significance of the global growth of Christianity, a growth that is ignored by and embarrassing to the mainlines here. If we are predicting events, as the author does, I predict that we will have the opportunity to join a global Christian denomination that started in South America or Asia, as the US mainine leaders attending schools of theology at secular universities continue to be assimilated into western secular values.
Good article, and I very much enjoyed my courses from Asbury, by the way.
Blessings,
March 10, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Like ANiC? (See http://www.anglicannetwork.ca/affiliations.htm)
March 10, 2009 at 9:41 pm
You will have to take the end bracket off that link to make it work, sorry.
March 10, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I think you’re splitting hairs on the alleged fundamentalist / evangelical distinction. Yes they have distinct histories, but in current core beliefs they are more similar than different. When people who are hostile to ‘fundamentalism’ offer their scathing criticisms they mean people who self-identify as evangelical.
(For example, watch how ‘fundamentalists’ are portrayed in the media and see if you can detect a difference that excludes evangelicals. Yes it is always a caricature at best – drooling idiots, heretic burners, the hateful and fearful – but there is no identifiable line between fundamentalist and any other theological conservative in this portrayal. Similarly, read Karen Armstrong’s book on fundamentalism for a rather common example of how the word is used. She rightly identifies Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli as proto-fundamentalists – as she is using the word and as it is commonly employed today.)
This distinction is also (as you pointed out) not well understood among evangelicals or fundamentalists. This isn’t so much a product of the lack of education – as if these were fixed quantities – as it is lack of current substantive difference. Most evangelicals resist the term fundamentalist because they perceive rightly that it is used as a pejorative. Yet in popular media imagination, in punditry, and among mainline gurus there is a shorthand for ‘fundamentalism’ – namely people who ‘read the Bible literally’. That is a misconception of how fundamentalists read the Bible. Fundamentalists and evangelicals in practice read the Bible in remarkably similar ways.
Usually the intentional (and less frequently accidental) libel of fundamentalism is directed at ALL who hold conservative theological views, whether these want to see it or not. It is analogous to the way the word Puritan is used today – when in fact many things described as ‘Puritanical’ actually refer to 19th Century fashions rather than 17th Century concerns.
March 11, 2009 at 4:11 pm
If I understand you, wspotts, what I see you getting into is the whole world of Christian foundationalism vs. subjectivism and emerging church concepts. Fundamentalism and certain parts of the evangelical church are essentially foundationalist — the Bible is seen as inerrant and unchanging and is the basis for all beliefs both religious and moral. Those parts of the evangelical church that are not foundationalist will have no reason to hold onto the conservative position as they realize that the emerging church is, in fact, relativistic in large part. The core difference between fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism is a difference of Scriptural interpretation rather than one of Scripture’s foundational truthfulness. This leads to a variety of differences sprouting from the same root. Fundamentalism tends to be more strictly authoritarian, evangelicalism more accepting, and so forth, but the key component is scriptural authority. I am a Presbyterian minister who went to Asbury (a nondenominational Wesleyan seminary, for those not in the know), and those who subscribed to some form of foundationalism — that is, some form of seeing the Bible as the central and only authority for faith that cannot be ignored — are far closer to my own viewpoint than those within my denomination who do not see the Bible as such.
March 11, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Jason – Very well expressed. That is what I was getting at, though your use of foundationalism is far more accurate. I would say that in common parlance, the two ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘foundationalism’ are confused. While I am not technically a fundamentalist – I often accept the designation because the person leveling it means something closer to ‘foundationalist’. [I do not endorse the rules that self-identified fundamentalists often embrace, and I certainly reject the dispensationalism that accompanied the Baptist variety of fundamentlist.]
Many thanks for the clarification.